미국의 신보수주의 외교이념과 민주주의: 현실주의와 도덕철학의 한 결합양식

Abstract

This essay tries to identify and highlight more continuity than discontinuity between the earlier generation of neoconservatives and its more recent proponents. In terms of rhetorics and terminology, the second-generation of neocons shows a significant difference from their predecessors. The cause of "democratic globalism" is at the center of controversy in defining the nature of the new brand of neoconservatism. Despite the apparent discontinuity in its rhetoric, argues this essay, at least two substantial elements remain intact, comprizing the defining characteristics of the neoconservative movement: One is an essentially power-political realism with regard to the issues of the nature of the world politics, diplomacy, and democracy, and the other is the belief that any successful foreign policy of the United States in this world depends ultimately not on the diplomacy itself but on the internal ideological warfare over its morality. Establishing a moral philosophy that ensures effective justification of realist U.S. policies abroad, whether it be alliance with dictatorships or controversial war-fighting, is the key to waging a successful moral warfare inside the nation. For all the generations of the neocons, the core of that moral philosophy has been a pattern of discourse that puts conspicuous emphasis on "democracy." The democratic discourse of the second generation neocons, which took the form of democratic globalism, flourished in the early 1990s and diminished since then, closely reflecting the initially noisy process of disintegration of the former Soviet bloc countries in Eastern Europe. Once the process of their democratization and integration into the greater Europe was practically complete, the democratic globalist discourse lost its political relevance and the momentum as the moral force of reinvigorating the neoconservative movement. In the late 1990s, however, when the neoconservatism entered a new phase of revival, it didn't mean the return of the democratic globalism to the center stage of the movement. A set of fundamentally geopolitical strategic and economic interests and a geopolitical concern over China constituted the soul of the newly revived neoconservative discourse. This also meant that the democratic discourse among the neocons since the late 1990s remained essentially instrumentalist, rather than substantial, being invoked and serving as the rationale for justification of a series of unpopular wars especially since 9/11. The second-generation neoconservatism was revived and became powerful in the last several years only at the price of marginalizing the democratic globalist discourse. In focusing on the continuity within the neoconservative movement of the old and new, this essay also tried to highlight the characteristic similarity between the second-generation neoconservative rhetorics and the Reagan doctrine.